Help! There’s a climate denier at my dinner table

The holidays just aren’t complete without a little drama for dessert. And what’s more dramatic than a planet in crisis?

The drama of having a climate denier for dinner.

The year is winding down and on course to be the second-hottest year on record. Wildfires raged in Alaska and Australia. One neighborhood in the Florida Keys has been underwater for almost three months straight.

The United Nations recently warned that the targets set by the Paris Agreement in 2015 need to be 5 times stronger if the world is going to avoid some of the worst consequences of a warming planet. So maybe now is the time to broach the subject with your “it’s all a hoax” uncle?

According to a recent poll by market research company Morning Consult, 9 percent of Americans plan to talk about climate change at Thanksgiving this year, while another 13 percent expect someone else to mention it.

Read the story from Grist by Kate Yoder - “Help! There’s a climate denier at my dinner table.”

Australia’s carbon emissions rise in off-season for first time in a decade

Australia’s carbon emissions jumped at the start of 2017, the first time they have risen in the first few months of a year for more than a decade, according to projections produced exclusively for the Guardian.

Two thirds of the increased emissions from the electricity
 sector was driven by NSW, much of it cause by a fall
in generation by the Snowy Hydro scheme.

Emissions in the first three months of the year normally drop compared with the previous quarter, driven by seasonal factors and holidays. But in something not seen in since 2005, emissions rose in the first quarter of 2017 compared with the last quarter of 2016 by 1.54m tonnes of CO2, according to the study by consultants NDEVR Environmental. The rise was driven by increases in emissions from electricity generation.

Read Michael Slezak’s story on The Guardian - “Australia’s carbon emissions rise in off-season for first time in a decade.”